Slack Tide

The Merrimack river is tidal from Newburyport to Haverhill which includes the little portion that I ramble along in Amesbury. Tides along the coast here rise and fall about nine feet, give or take, likely influenced by the Bay of Fundy’s draw upon the Gulf of Maine. Fundy has arguably the greatest tidal differentials in the world (there’s another bay in Northern Canada that disputes this claim) reaching to fifty feet in places.

So the further north you travel on the New England coast the larger the tidal variation will be. Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine, for example, reaches more than twelve feet. Further Downeast, Eastport approaches twenty. For comparison purposes, Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina experiences just three foot variations.

This morning the Merrimack River was experiencing low slack tide. The tide had gone out to sea and now the river was caught in that still place before the tide comes in again. Nothing moved on its surface. There was no noticeable current and because there was no wind, there were no ripples either. Any debris that was journeying out to sea was resting there in abeyance.

I think all of us experience such slackness in some kind of cycle. Maybe it’s some monthly thing caused by the pull of the moon. Maybe it’s in the stars or Mars and Venus. Maybe it’s a weekly phenomenon caused by work or romance or coupon specials at the supermarket. Maybe it’s just the despairing state of the world. It’s something though.

Our tidal divergences, on the other hand, will register as mania or some other kind of lesser enthusiasm. I know a Fundy. I know an Hatteras. I know people in-between. I think I’m somewhere in-between myself. There are days when I’m confident about everything. There are others when I’d rather not arise. I’d say the disparity is around nine-feet, give or take. I’m no Walt Whitman for sure. Neither am I Bartleby the Scrivener.

But maybe I’m being too singular of mind. Like Walt says, we’re full of contradictions and contain multitudes. And our complicated beings reside in more than just one place. My heart’s in Hatteras. My soul is in Acadia. My ancestry hails from Fundy. Still today I’m slack, just like the Merrimack.